St. Pierre vs. Silva “superfight” could happen in 2010

Editor’s Note: Content from this article appears courtesy of CBSSports.com.

The next superfight?

Georges St. Pierre took on and defeated one of the biggest challenges of his career in UFC lightweight champion B.J. Penn. The fight was the first to have a three-part UFC Primetime preview special on Spike TV to help promote it.

If St. Pierre should successfully hold onto his welterweight title over the next year, another superfight could certainly be in the offing: St. Pierre against UFC middleweight champion Anderson Silva.

“I think it’s possible,” said UFC president Dana White. “Would I like to see those two fight? Absolutely.”

When asked if he wants to fight Silva, St. Pierre was very quick with his answer.

“For sure,” said St. Pierre.

St. Pierre then explained why.

“The primary reason I do the sport is not for the fame,” said St. Pierre. “I do it for myself. It’s important to me to always find a new challenge. It would be very interesting for me.”

The biggest adjustment for St. Pierre would be adding the extra weight to be competitive. St. Pierre wants to be sure to do that the right way.

“I have never taken a steroid in my life, and I never will,” said St. Pierre. “If I fight Silva, I’d have to put on some extra weight. It would take me a few extra months to get ready.”

With both fighters having prior commitments in 2009, the earliest the match could take place would be the beginning of 2010.

Unless he wins a tournament to be the number one contender for the middle weight title, I don’t want to see this fight. I’m not saying it wouldn’t be a good fight, I just don’t want to see two belts on hold so the UFC can hype another “superfight” and cash in on another big payday.

I’m tired of someone telling me what the best matches are going to be, a tournament takes care of that. And smart money says they would stand to cash in pretty big on the matchups a tournament undoubtedly would produce.

This fight has to happen if both continue to win. They both own their repective divisions and getting the huge paydays is where its at. Tournaments will never happen again in the UFC. So you better jump ship or deal with it.

A middleweith tournament would be a good idea if Silva haden’t cleaned most of the viable contedors out already. He has owned his division and if St. Pierre beats Alves he own his too. I say let em fight, I think it would be a much closer fight than St. Pierre/penn.

Heck yes it would be an awesome fight. I dont think GSP would stand and trade with Silva. Just like Penn all 3 men possess greathand speed and we have seen the effects of a wel placed punch by Anderson SIlva. I think GSP would try to take him down and deliver some ground and pound. Either way it would be a great fight. Yes a lot closer than this past super fight.

This is actually the reason the UFC should put on tournaments with open weights. Maybe a middleweight/Welterweight only tournament? Give the winner a million dollars of some trash. I miss the older pride and love the dream tournaments.

Tournaments… where two damaged, exhausted dudes fight, or the guy who was the alternate can punch Aoki in the face to become the champ.

I’ll watch the tournaments gladly, but I’d like the UFC as it is, where each fighter is trying to execute a very carefully planned strategy to defeat the other guy, and leave the what-if-hellboy-met-aoki-in-a-bar scenarios to Dream.

You will never see same night tournaments in the UFC and it has nothing to do with the UFC
….. state athletic commisions would never allow it and even if the UFC went overseas to do it they would be in serious trouble here in the statew (see big foot silva)…. as far as GSP vs the spider it is a fight I would love to see but at a catch weight of say 177 no title on the line if GSP wants to move up to middleweight then he would first have to beat someone like maiea or hendo (remember penn WAS ww title holder at one time he has proved he could fighg at 170)

as an MMA fan i would love to see this fight happen and like tk said at a catch weight of 177-178 that would be the most even playing field they could come up with seeing as anderson has fought at 170 before but at 177 i think it would be easy for each guy to make weight and they could just focus on there training and gameplans and may the best guy win.

Ive heard that aswell and i think its concivable for then to do it this year and this is how.

once Silva beats leites , he would be ready to fight Demian Maia in say june GSP will fight Alves near the same time And then the coul be schedualed to fight at a catch weight of 177 in october or november.

Im glad someone touched on the tourney suggestion, but now I will. Like TK said, its the Athletic Commissions. Every fighter is suspended from fight for atleast a short time after every fight. Whether they were injured or not. So a tournament is impossible in the US. As for you Na sayers not wanting to see this because its just some quick money, c’mon u cant call urself a true MMA fan if your against seein the best P4P fighters throwdown. Hell if Fedor would hit up Richard Simmons I’d love to see him fight Silva at Light Heavyweight.

Im glad someone touched on the tourney suggestion, but now I will. Like TK said, its the Athletic Commissions. Every fighter is suspended from fight for atleast a short time after every fight. Whether they were injured or not. So a tournament is impossible in the US.

While it’s true fighters are often (but not always) given suspensions after a fight, the main reason we don’t have tourneys in the US is that the athletic commissions will only let a fighter fight for 25 minutes per night. You can’t have much of a single-night tourney with 25 minutes of fight time per fighter. The commissions would let most fighters without serious injury continue in a tourney setting as long as they didn’t exceed 25 minutes total.

There have been recent tourneys (such as YAMMA 1) in sanctioned US states, but they were hampered by this same problem of shortened bouts because of the time limit.

Also, (and I apologize for the triple post) I’d like to say there is always the possibility of a multi-event tournament like Pride or Dream have done, to avoid the problem of the super-short early rounds, but when you’re talking about a current title holder, and add in the annoying tendency for UFC titleholders to end up in TUF show hell or injured for 6 months, I think it would just further exacerbate the existing problem of infrequent title defenses. But it would be cool to see such a tournament perhaps determining #1 contendership (I guess TUF 4 was a little like that).

As much as I love this sport, I am not a fan of a fighter going up a weight class to fight another. In this case Anderson Silva, who is for many the best p4p fighter, has nothing to lose. He has already dominated everyone in his weight class and though Georges is also thought by many as the best p4p fighter, he has to make physiological changes. This automatically puts him at a disadvantage. In a few more years GSP may have to move up a weight class, but for now, I don’t think it is a smart thing to do.With both fighters being so well rounded and adept at what they do, the additional weight that GSP has to gain is only going to take away from his abilities. Anderson will still come into the fight the larger man and we have all seen that size does matter. I know, it will sell out stadium seats and PPV’s and yes, I will be watching it with anticipation. Yes, I am a hypocrite.

“as an MMA fan i would love to see this fight happen and like tk said at a catch weight of 177-178 that would be the most even playing field they could come up with seeing as anderson has fought at 170 before but at 177 i think it would be easy for each guy to make weight and they could just focus on there training and gameplans and may the best guy win.”

@BigDave:
I really don’t think it would be “easy” for Anderson Silva to cut to 177. He has fought as 170 before but his body frame was much different then. He’s packed on a lot of muscle since, especially upper body, and between fights he walks around at just above 200. Furthermore I’d like to see them make the fight for a title and so it would have to be contested at 185 to do that. I think GSP is deserving of this after he chose to defend his WW title against BJ with a lot to lose and nothing tangible to gain.

“How much slower would GSP be at MW?
Anderson sure isn’t going to be losing anything staying at his own weight class, he will be his usual insanely amazing self.”

@revjames:
I doubt GSP would be much slower, if at all. Obviously it depends on how much muscle he packs on, as he alludes to in the article. But after training for BJ reports were that he was at about 180-185 lbs before the cut and so, if this was the case if he were to fight Silva, he wouldn’t have to make much of a cut. And with no weight loss to effect them this often allows fighters to retain the speed they develop through training. But he would give a considerable strength advantage away. Then again training partners of GSP say it’s like wrestling with a light heavyweight – so it would be interesting.

I for one DO NOT want to see this fight.
I was so jacked to see GSP vs PENN 2 that when the fight was actually on I couldnt even watch. I wanted to cheer for both fighters but I was very clear that BJ’s head was not in it.
I think GSP is awesome but I dont think he would last 5 rounds with Anderson

Also with Golden Boy signing more MMA fighters Anderson,s wallet will more then likely do better outside of the UFC (say in a boxing ring)

This is a fight that must happen while both are totally in their primes. I personally believe that GSP would win in the same dominant fashion that has become his trademark. He would use his kicks and effective punches (and a whole lot of dodging bombs) to get body control and take Silva down to the ground.

I honestly believe that Silva would stand no chance on the ground. I don’t think he can sub GSP and GSP’s physical dominance on the ground is unmatched. He is a monster and I think would be considerably stronger than Silva in wrestling/GNP.

no one is talking about same night tournaments. Don’t give me this shit about injuries and state athletic commisions not allowing tournaments. That’s whay you do it over four events, no one fights twice in a night. And if someone gets injured they get replaced it is a ssimple as that. There is no reason an athletic commision would not allow a tournament over several events, it’s the same thing that is going on now there would just be some structure to it.

Ktru……….You say that the UFC will never again hold tournaments but if we the fans demand it, they will.

Open-weight tourney’s will never be allowed, and I for one am thankful for that, but there is absolutely no reason we can not have weight specific tournaments in the UFC.

This fight should happen and should happen at 185. As has been mentioned already, both fighters have essentially cleared out their divisions. Silva plans to retire and unless he decides to try to take the LHW title, this is as good a time as any to get out. But before he leaves, he would have one last real challenge in GSP.

Meanwhile, GSP has many years ahead of him and a real lack of substantial competitors at 170. While anyone in the WW could get lucky and beat him once (aka Serra) or he could have an off night or not be in the fight mentally and lose (especially if he doesn’t feel challenged), in general he has demonstrated that he is far and away the best in WW. No one else is even close. Can he be beat? yes. But he can beat anyone in WW. So his next challenge has to be MW. Maybe he should have to do a warmup fight or two, as Silva did with his LHW test in the UFC, but realistically, he has shown he has the skill to be ready to jump right to a title challenge.

If this fight doesn’t happen this year or very early in 2010, then it will likely never happen. Fighting at MW would give both fighters advantages and disadvantages. GSP would fight at his natural weight and not have to cut (much), which can impact endurance. Silva would fight as his normal fighting weight, but would have had to cut to get there, something he has shown does not hurt him much. Silva would come in a much larger fighter, but GSP could spend his training time to adjust his diet to pack on extra weight in muscle. Then he could walk into the cage at over 185 and minimize the size difference.

In the end, I would give the fight to GSP. Silva is amazing, but I just don’t think he would match the drive, training, athleticism and skills of GSP. His heart is definitely not in the fights anymore, the way GSP’s is. GSP’s wrestling is just so dominant and his other skills are on mostly on par (or better) with the best in the world. I don’t think Silva edges him out in any one category as much as GSP edges him in wrestling. GSP is good enough to neutralize most of Silva strengths but I don’t think Silva can neutralize GSP’s wrestling.

JR called it. We all know that Silva is a spectacular striker.He cannot with stand a GSP full body targetted ground & Pound onslaught. Silva crushes anyone who engages in frequent striking exchanges with him. If he is taken to the ground he must be controlled and forced to defend agaisnt strikes. His clinch game is un paralleled if the victim wants to hang out in it and trade(No strategy Rich Franklin).

GSP has the complete skillset to implement a dominating take down and G&P asault. His strengths(wrestling and G&P) are A Silva’s vulnerabililities. With Gregg Jackson’s fight strategizing and emphasis on drilling the strategy to perfection, Anderson’s dangerous striking and clinch game can be neutralized.The biggest problem would be execution.
Marquadt was doing fine avoiding strikes and attempting to implement the takedown until he got caught, Hendo was ground and pounding Anderson’s head but wasn’ able to hold him down. Even the no strikes Jujuitsu guy(?) gave Anderson a decent G& P from the mount before Anderson subbed him. 3 rounds of weak takedowns from and exhausted guy. Does anyone reall see Anderson getting up from a GSP ground and pound and top control unscathed?
The only way Silva wins is if GSP is too proud (a la Frank Shamrock vs Cung Le)to implement a smart Gregg Jackson strategy and rather chooses to trade strikes for long periods or if he gets caught in the execution. With Silva, one well placed strike is enough.

It will be a much anticpated superfight but i already know the strategy and probable outcome.